Love from Fire, Loam from Ash
by Tessa Crowley
Summary: Despite what Harry tells himself, he is not over the firestorm that was his relationship with Draco Malfoy. Despite all their efforts to avoid it, they are forced to confront it all again. Based on and around "La traviata" by Giuseppe Verdi.
1. Simmer

_In the summer in the garden in the rain, Draco Malfoy crashes into him, kisses him like a drowning man gasps for air. It is wild and frantic, electric and white-hot, and Harry kisses him back for reasons just beyond the edge of his understanding._

 _Warm rain rolls down his skin, fingers grope at his ribs, and Harry kisses him until he is drunk off it, until he's dizzy with it, until he is able to almost – almost – forget who they are, where they are, what they're doing._

 _The initial roar of it settles some, into a steady rhythm. Breath catches, muscles tighten under Harry's hands._

 _He pulls away. "I—"_

 _Harry swallows, looks back toward the wide French doors that stand open, leading into Grimmauld Place. He can hear the vague, distant sounds of conversation coming from just inside, but nothing like alarm. No one in the party saw._

 _Draco pulls away. "I'm sorry," he says. There is white-blonde hair, slick with rainwater, falling in his eyes._

 _"_ _Why?" Harry asks._

 _"_ _I shouldn't have done that," he says. He blinks against the rain, turns his head away._

 _"_ _When have either of us benefited from doing the things we should have done?" Harry asks._

 _Draco looks back at him and frowns. Harry is fascinated with the drops of rain that follow the curve of his cheek, that roll over and down his lips._

 _"_ _We're partners," he says. "There are rules—"_

 _Harry catches the raindrop hanging from his lip in a kiss. Draco's breath stammers; Harry steers him backward against the warm, rainslicked stone of the wall, out of view, and returns the favor of the incredible kiss. Draco makes lovely sounds, makes lovely movements, and his fingertips return to Harry's ribs._

 _"_ _When have either of us benefited from rules?" Harry asks into his mouth._

 _Draco answers only with a moan. Harry goes back to kissing him._

* * *

In winter in the hallway in the small hours of the morning, Draco comes striding down the hallway, expression stormy, black robes billowing around his feet.

"Great," he says, the moment he's in earshot.

Harry frowns. If there is some part of him that is admiring the striking black-on-black robes of an Unspeakable and the way they contour so easily to every shallow curve of his body, if there is some part of Harry's animal brain that is remembering the way those shallow curves felt under his fingertips, then Harry keeps that part firmly in check.

"Brilliant," Harry echoes. "I can't imagine why he'd call us both here, but it can't be anything good."

"Let's get this over with," Draco says, moving brusquely for the door.

Harry starts. "You can't just walk into the Minister of Magic's office—" he begins, but Draco is already turning the handle.

"I switched departments to get away from you, Potter," he offers, flippantly, "a door won't stop me."

Harry growls in the back of his throat. "I doubt there's anything that will keep you from running away."

"Suck on _every cock in the universe_ , Potter," Draco says, which catches Shacklebolt's secretary quite off-guard.

"Uh," she squeaks, "the Minister isn't—"

"Yes, he is," Draco interjects. "We're going through."

"You can't—"

But Draco does, breezing right through the antechamber and toward the wide double doors engraved with _MINISTER OF MAGIC_. Harry follows, disliking for entirely childish reasons the idea that he has to be the one following Draco.

If Shacklebolt is at all surprised that they come barging into the office of the most powerful man in Britain entirely unannounced, he doesn't show it. When the doors swing open, he glances up once over his wire-frame glasses, then returns his focus to the stack of parchments in front of him.

"For all his faults, Mr. Malfoy," Shacklebolt says by way of greeting, "your father did manage to instill some sense of propriety in you. I wonder where that's gone."

"Bets are off when you force me into the same room as this wanker."

"Standing right here," Harry says icily.

Shacklebolt sighs. He takes off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose.

"Do either of you two remember when you were the best partners in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement?" he asks.

"Unfortunately," Harry says.

"Like a shellshocked soldier," Draco adds.

"This is going to be a disaster." Shacklebolt rises, crosses the room, shuts his office door.

"Sounds like it," Draco says.

"Trust me, if I thought I had any recourse, I would be doing that instead. Unfortunately, this is a matter of the most profound importance that directly affects Britain's national security interests."

"If you're trying to get us to work together again—"

"Sit," Shacklebolt interrupts.

Harry and Draco exchange uneasy glances, but they sit. Shacklebolt sits across from them, at his desk, setting aside the stacks of parchment he'd been working on when they arrived.

"I left the department, Shacklebolt," Draco reminds him. "I'm not an auror anymore."

"Trust me, I remember," Shacklebolt says.

"The fit you threw, it would be hard to forget."

"Fuck yourself on plywood, Potter."

"If you two don't resolve your differences quickly," Shacklebolt interrupts, "a lot of people are going to die."

It doesn't really drain the anger, but it does defuse some of the tension. Harry feels the nettle of Draco's gaze on him, but he does not look back.

"That seems hyperbolic," Draco says after a moment, presumably when Harry refuses to meet his eyes.

"Antonio Sorrentino," Shacklebolt says. He opens his desk drawer and produces case file, in the all-too-familiar grey-and-tan cardstock folder, which he tosses to Draco. "The friendly, public face on an Italian purist extremist group."

"So why is it our problem and not Italy's?" Harry asks.

"We're working with them on this case," Shacklebolt says, "ever since it came to light that they'll be transporting something very big and very dangerous to England via Florence."

Harry frowns. "Transporting what?"

"If we knew, we'd tell you."

Draco is thumbing over the first few papers in the folder, and Harry watches his face as each individual feature falls into the shape of a frown. Harry remembers, all at once, the long process of memorizing the minutiae of his expressions, of learning to discern the quirk of an eyebrow from the twitch of a mouth. He remembers the strange, fluttering sense of accomplishment he felt when he realized just how well he knew Draco, how easily he could read every subtle change in that porcelain face. It makes something deep in him ache, which in turn makes the rest of him very angry.

"You look stupid when you read," Harry says to make himself feel better.

"You look stupid when you say or do absolutely fucking anything," Draco snaps back, eyes trained firmly on the case file.

"Merlin's tits," Shacklebolt sighs.

"We can't work together," Harry says. "Send me in alone. Malfoy's not even an auror anymore."

"But he still has all his auror training," Shacklebolt says. "And trust me, given where you'll be undercover, you'll need him. There aren't a lot of aurors, past or present, who—"

" _La Fenice?_ " Draco says suddenly. "The Florentine opera house?"

"The same," Shacklebolt says. "You see now why we need to pull you out of the Department of Mysteries for this. Not a lot of crossover in background, law enforcement and opera."

"What in shitting fuck does Draco Malfoy know about opera?" Harry asks.

This, somehow, seems to make Draco more angry than any other comment. He snaps the case file shut and if looks could kill, Harry would be almost certainly catch fire. "Fuck you, Potter, I'm a classically trained countertenor."

Despite himself, Harry's surprised. "You are?"

"I spent six years in a Viennese conservatory, dickhead!"

This does little to abate Harry's surprise. "You did?"

"We were partners for over a year! Did you never once _listen_ when I talked?"

"Apparently not," Harry says.

Draco growls, snaps the case file shut, tosses it back onto Shacklebolt's desk. "We can't work together," he says – or to be more accurate, repeats. "I have moral objections to being in the same room as him."

"Then consider yourself under the orders of the Minister of Magic to reevaluate your morality," Shacklebolt returns, not missing a beat, "because this case is far too important to be squandered because the two of you can't get over whatever dragon shit it is that forces you to squabble like children."

Draco purses his lips, sits back in his chair, folds his arms. Harry's mind is going back – however unwillingly – over the long road that brought them to this point. Shacklebolt has every right to be angry, Harry supposes. If it were him dealing with the loss of two of his objectively best aurors, he'd be angry, too.

"We don't know what sort of deal will be going down at the opera house, but we know it's going to be big, and we know that it has the capacity to kill a lot of people. I need the best team available, which unfortunately for me means you two.

"This is _not_ a request," Shacklebolt says. "Work out your differences. I don't care what they are. You're leaving for Florence tomorrow."

"Minister—" Harry begins.

"You're dismissed."

And as much as Harry knows they both enjoy sassing the Minister of Magic, in practice it only goes so far. In the end, he _is_ still the Minister of Magic. Or more relevantly, he is still their extremely scary boss.

Shacklebolt, as if in further signal that he is done with the conversation, returns to his large stack of parchments.

Draco spends a few brief, tense seconds drumming his fingernails on the arm of his chair before abruptly rising to his feet, grabbing the file, and spinning around to exit the office. Harry chews his lip a moment in silence.

"Is there _any_ way I can talk you out of—"

"Get out of my office."

"Right."

Harry rises and leaves. There is a knot forming in the pit of his stomach, a dread more intense than he'd anticipated. He tells himself that he should be more angry than anxious, but now that he has to confront it head-on, the shallow veneer of indignation melts away as though it was never there at all, and Harry is forced to tackle the uncomfortable realization that he is far more fearful than he is upset.

"I would ask if you want a copy of the file," Draco says when Harry steps through the antechamber and into the hallway again, "but as I recall, you don't read case files."

It hurts more than it should, more than Harry wants to admit, perhaps for the same reason Harry is so suddenly fearful – because Harry will have to spend the next few weeks working with Draco again, because all the bad history is already bubbling up to the surface, and Harry isn't sure he's ready for it.

"Two months since we've split up," Draco continues, voice terse, "and still you manage to make my life difficult."

"Well if it makes you feel better, I'm not looking forward to it, either."

"It doesn't make me feel better."

Harry suspected that it wouldn't. "Well, it's happening anyway, so perhaps we should call for a cease-fire."

Draco snorts derisively. "As if that would last. You were never able to keep your fucking mouth shut about anything, even when…"

The second half of the sentence hangs in the air, unspoken but not unacknowledged. _When we were together._ Harry's face tightens, and the knot of dread in him only grows. He is not ready to confront this. He cannot imagine that he ever will be.

"You're the one that called it off, Malfoy," Harry reminds him, voice low.

A darkness comes over Draco's face, deeper and more deadly than any of the biting, flippant anger he'd shown in Shacklebolt's office. "I'm not doing this with you," he says, voice dangerous. "Be at the fucking Floo station tomorrow morning on time or I'm leaving without you."

He storms off, and Harry can detect a subtle trembling in the hand that clenches the file, and Harry is not ready for this, he is not ready for this.


	2. Smolder

_Their first night together is not entirely unlike their first day working together as partners – which is to say, it's loud, and angry, and there's an awful lot of swearing, but somehow it works out better than either of them had really expected._

 _Everything about Draco, in that moment, is catlike – the arc of his shoulder blades shifting under the skin, the curve of his spine, the sharp hisses of breath. Harry's fingernails dig into the skin of his hips, staining ivory with blush red, and they move against each other like they are trying to make up for twenty-five years of unresolved emotional baggage. Perhaps they are._

 _"_ _Harder," Draco hisses._

 _"_ _Fucking pushy," Harry pants. He is already moving with what he judges to be plenty of force and deliberateness, but trust Malfoy to never be satisfied._

 _"_ _I said_ harder _, Potter," Draco snarls. "We're fucking, not cuddling, I don't—"_

 _Harry's grip tightens on his hips and he swings him around, tugging upward on one thigh while bending him forward over the nearby end table, driving deeper into his hot, pliant body._

 _"_ _Fuck." The word's halfway between a moan and a sob. Draco's usually starched Oxford is twisted, bunched around his chest, his thighs spread open, his hair disheveled. Harry fucks him past his everyday pressed perfection and it is the most ecstatically erotic thing he's ever seen._

 _"_ _You're gorgeous when I'm fucking you," Harry whispers, bent forward so he can whisper it into Draco's ear. His rhythm is brutal, deep, and punishing, and the aging end table rattles with each thrust. The only immediate response is a small, almost desperate moan. "And you're so – Christ – fucking tight."_

 _"_ _Harder," Draco says again, though the tenor of his voice is different now. It's drawn, nearly trembling. "Fuck. Harder – I'm going to come—"_

 _Harry groans, drives down into that careful angle with which he is becoming increasingly familiar, releases one hip to reach around and pull firmly on Draco's lean, fire-hot cock. It drags a garbled, frantic moan out of him. "Should have mentioned you were such a slut for a good fucking," Harry gasps into his ear. "We could have been doing this ages ago."_

 _Draco's entire body is seizing up around Harry's cock, and Harry's not far behind. He is electric, thrumming with the heat of his own arousal. He has never had sex like this before, and now he's hating himself for it._

 _When Draco does come, it feels all-encompassing and inevitable; it runs down the length of his lean, pale body like a force of nature, and Harry is caught in it, hips jerking, coming inside him with such intensity that Harry's mind goes blank._

 _And when the roar settles, when the buzzing thrum of orgasm fades, perhaps it should be awkward. Perhaps they should both realize that they've crossed a line that shouldn't have been crossed; perhaps they should be remorseful or worried or any number of things._

 _Instead, Draco says, "Fuck, that was good."_

 _Harry half-smirks, pulls out of him. Draco is debauched and fucked open, still slumped over the end table catching his breath._

 _"_ _Not worried about the rules of intradepartmental affairs anymore?" Harry asks._

 _"_ _Order in," is Draco's only answer, as he turns over on the end table and looks up at him. "We're not leaving this house for another two rounds at least."_

* * *

"What's my name again?"

"Christ, Potter, I had only just managed to forget how wildly incompetent you are."

Harry glares at him across the carriage as it rattles down the streets of magical Florence. He wants to be angrier at Draco, he really does, but he doesn't even really look like Draco anymore, not with the glamour. His hair is auburn, his eyes are clear blue, and all the familiar and harsh lines of his face are softened.

"I've got fucking enough to worry about, Malfoy," Harry says, "I'm the one who's going to be doing all the actual _work_. The undercover identity was a formality at best."

"Niles Forger, you absolute clod," Draco snaps at him. "And I'm Thierry Daupin, a French expat living in London."

"Yeah, about that," Harry says, "why did they make you _French?_ You don't speak French."

"Yes, I do."

Harry frowns. "You do?"

Draco's anger only seems to intensify. "My father is half-French; I spent all my childhood summers in Calais."

"You _did?_ "

"Goddammit, Potter, you really didn't listen once during the entire course of our relationship, did you?"

"I certainly don't fucking remember you speaking French!"

"Why would you? It's only an integral part of my identity!"

"Well excuse me for fucking living, Malfoy. As I recall, you spent half our time together insisting to me that it wasn't serious and didn't matter! You gave me no reason to think I should care about integral parts of your identity!"

Draco fumes in silence and rips open the case file again. The spelled carriage goes over a particularly pronounced hump in the cobblestone and Harry tries to massage away the beginnings of a headache.

"Why does a French expat need a bodyguard, anyway?" Harry asks. Despite his protestations, he really does have a bad habit of not reading the case files as carefully as he should. He knows that Niles is Draco's – Thierry's – hired protection, but he can't recall why.

"Because I'm an up-and-coming opera star dealing with unsavory fans," Draco mutters. "I hired a bodyguard for a sense of personal safety."

"Right," Harry says. Then, "Wait, an up-and-coming opera star? Is – what's your assumed role?"

"Mr. Sorrentino will be directing a month-long run of _La traviata_ through December," Draco answers. "Thierry has been invited to audition."

Harry stares in astonishment. "You're—?"

The carriage abruptly rattles to a halt. Draco flips the case file shut and tucks it into his robe before Harry has a chance to cobble together something like a response. He climbs out, breezing into the chilly, biting air of the wintry city.

 _La Fenice_ , the building and opera house where their target works and launders a not inconsiderable amount of money for extremist groups, is a magnificent, resplendent building, despite the unsavory connections Harry knows it has. It is all gleaming white marble and golden filigree, and high above the massive mahogany doors a burning phoenix spreads its fiery wings. Harry hadn't made the connection before, but now that he thinks about it, _fenice_ must be the Italian word for "phoenix."

Harry hurries to catch up with Draco, who is already spelling open the massive doors when he's close enough to do so. "Malfoy," Harry hisses under his breath, "doesn't this rather defeat the entire point of undercover?"

"I'm sure I have no idea what you mean," Draco answers. He's already speaking with a French accent, the bastard.

"Undercover personas are supposed to fly under the radar," Harry says, and he has to drop his voice because they are arriving to a crowded antechamber, decorated opulently with scarlets and golds. "Isn't auditioning for an opera at a major venue the diametric opposite of subtle?"

"This is the _theatre_ , Monsieur Forger," Draco says, casting him a stormy but brief glance over his shoulder. "Loud is par for the course. It's the quiet ones who are always out of place."

Before Harry can say anything, Draco is throwing open two double doors on the opposite side of the room. They open immediately into the house of the theatre, a massive, lavish, with a domed and painted ceiling. The curtains stand drawn, the stage empty, and down near the orchestra pit a table is set up in the middle of the left-center aisle.

" _Je suis arivée!_ " Draco says, and Harry immediately decides that he does not want to hear Draco speaking French ever again; it is far too attractive. "Am I late, monsieur?"

Draco is gliding down the aisle like he owns the building, and the man at the table turns when he hears him.

Antonio Sorrentio – Harry recognizes him right away; he'd memorized his face from the picture in the case file. He is tall and handsome, though not in a classical sort of way. He's hawkish and sharp, olive-skinned, dressed richly without being overstated. When he sees Draco, dark eyes seem to light.

"Monsignor Daupin! How delightful to finally meet you!"

Draco offers his hand, but rather than shake it, Sorrentino sweeps it into one of his own and bends low to kiss the knuckle. Harry's taken aback by the gesture, but Draco makes a delighted trilling sound, like a flattered girl.

"They had told me to expect a handsome young tenor," Sorrentino says. "They had not prepared me for a vision of beauty!"

"There are those who would find such boldness unbecoming," Draco returns without missing a beat. Harry would be surprised at how easily Draco has transformed himself into Thierry Daupin if he hadn't seen him do it many times before on other undercover missions. "Luckily for you, I'm not one of those people."

"Lucky, indeed! Before we begin – what is the upper end of your falsetto, my dear?"

"Goodness," Draco says. "Aren't you supposed to buy me dinner first?"

Witty bastard. Harry stands back and folds his arms over his chest. Thankfully, he does not need to fake the surliness.

Sorrentino laughs delightedly, and Draco smiles disarmingly.

"But to answer your question," Draco says, "I can scrape a high F-sharp in a pinch. But my proper register goes plenty high on its own. Why do you ask?"

"If I tell you now I fear I might scare you away," Sorrentino answers. "And before I do that, I'd like to hear you sing at least once. I've heard so many good things about the French Songbird!"

"My goodness, you do know how to flatter, monsieur!"

"You brought your sheet music?"

Draco produces it from the sleeve of his expensive, designer robe, handing it over. Sorrentino only glances at once before he says—

"Be still my heart! _O sole mio_ – an excellent choice. Please!"

Sorrentino gestures to the stage. Draco beams and glides toward the far end of the house, where a narrow stairway crosses the orchestra pit to the foot of the stage. Sorrentino sends the sheet music flying across the way to a man on an upright piano several meters away, arranges his papers, then glances back briefly – his eyes catch on Harry.

"And who are you?" he asks.

Harry keeps his face inscrutable. "Hired muscle," he answers, flatly, dialing up an east-end drawl.

Sorrentino makes a face. "Aren't you just," he says. Then he summarily forgets Harry's existence, turning back to the stage. "Are you ready, my dear?"

"Of course!"

"Luciano?"

The pianist plays up a rousing few chords, Harry sits down, half-unsure—

—but then Malfoy starts to sing, and all the world seems to narrow, as if bowing in deference to the sound that is produced.

Harry will be the first to admit – with great enthusiasm – that he knows nothing about music, let alone opera. But when Draco starts to sing, he feels as though he does not need to.

Draco sings like sunlight through a cloud, like cool rain on feverish skin. He sings with vim and vigor, with impossible sincerity and profundity. Every note, every breath is its own prayer of appreciation of the accidental miracle of life.

To say Harry is stunned would be a tremendous understatement. He did not know that sounds like that existed, let alone that Draco Malfoy could make them. There is a not insignificant part of him that never wants to hear anything other than Draco singing ever again.

It ends too quickly, or perhaps Harry had been too spellbound to notice its passing. The silence that follows the final note rattles in his head and he is left staring at Draco at down-center stage, feeling like everything has changed, somehow, in some inexplicable way.

"Tremendous," Sorrentino says, voice reverent. Then, "I wonder – can you do it again, a half-octave higher?"

He can, apparently, and somehow Harry is surprised all over again.


	3. Sear

_Draco may be emotionally maladjusted, but he is not stupid._

 _He knows what this is – he knows what is growing inside him. He can feel it, unfolding like a flower, or perhaps uncoiling like a serpent. Both, he supposes, depending on the perspective._

 _In his defense, Draco really has been trying to keep his distance. When Harry gets too chummy, he puts him firmly in his place with a sharp word, callous enough to cut but not quite deep enough to bleed. He knows how to walk that razor wire between cordiality and emotional distance – he's been doing it all his life with everyone he knows._

 _But there are moments – moments after a successful sting, when Harry looks windswept and triumphant; or in the quiet moments in their shared office when Draco catches him stealing glances while Draco fills out reports; or even during sex, when Harry's lips ghost across the skin of his neck and his whispering is so gentle that he thinks – for a moment, Draco thinks—_

 _—_ _would it be so bad? Surely if Draco can trust himself with anyone, it would be with the Great Savior of the Wizarding World. Surely even if the worst were to happen, if they were to part on the most terrible terms, surely Harry Potter of all people would be reasonably gentle with his heart._

 _Every time he doesn't make up his mind about what he should say, Draco feels like there is some sort of clock ticking down – to what, exactly, he cannot say. But every time, it feels like failure, like he's stupid for not knowing what to do with the fac that he is slowly but surely falling in love with stupid fucking Harry Potter._

 _"_ _Draco?"_

 _He looks up, all his thoughts slipping so easily through his fingers._

 _"_ _You haven't actually written anything in going on an hour."_

 _Draco glances down at the report, then back up at Harry. He sneers._

 _"_ _Staring, Potter?"_

 _"_ _A bit," Harry admits, grinning. Draco hates that grin. He wants to lick it off his face. "Don't give me that look. You're not on the worse end of things to stare at, you know."_

 _But mostly, Draco hates those comments. He hates them because he knows – he absolutely knows – that if he just let one slip through, Harry would build on it, consciously or not. If Draco just let himself be vulnerable, just once, Harry would let himself get attached, and then—_

 _And then what? They fall in love and are happy forever? Doesn't seem very fucking likely. When has it ever been that simple for him? Draco hasn't even come out to his father. How is he supposed to survive in a relationship with Harry Potter?_

 _"_ _Draco?"_

 _He takes in a breath. That terrible clock keeps ticking down, and Draco realizes that however badly he's got it for Harry Potter, none of that will change the fact that he's still a fucking coward._

 _"_ _Eyes on your own work, Potter," Draco says, dipping his dried-out quill back in the inkwell, feeling all over again like a failure._

* * *

Getting information out of others on undercover missions got a lot easier for Harry when he learned that there is one truly universal way to earn a person's trust.

"Brought liquor," Harry says when he arrives backstage.

He is met with a volley of cheers, mostly in Italian but with a few in English. He's first approached by Giuseppe, which is good, because Harry has since learned that Giuseppe, as stage manager, works very closely with Sorrentino and likely has comparable ties to the extremists.

"Forger, my friend," Giuseppe says, in the now familiar accent that is just down the street from impenetrable, "clearly you have already learned the fastest way to an Italian's heart."

"Through the gullet, I'm told," Harry says. "Still cold."

The liquor is quickly depleted, and several stage hands appear from nowhere to partake. Before Harry even realizes it, the beginnings of an after-hours party is manifest. Many of those present are streaked with paint, presumably from having painted backdrops all day.

"It's cheap," Giuseppe says once everyone has settled down on the period furniture crammed into the stage-left wing, "but then, this is about getting drunk, not enjoying the alcohol."

"I wouldn't know where to get good liquor anyway," Harry admits, collapsing next to Giuseppe on the chez lounge. "If it's quality you're after, I'll refer you to my boss."

"Ah, right, the little French – what's the English term? Fag?"

Harry frowns. It's always so easy for him to forget just how homophobic magical folk can be. Harry supposes they're behind the times socially as much as they are in fashion and technology.

"Yeah," he says, despite wanting to pour Giuseppe's drink over his head, "that's the one."

"Can't be French without the snobbery," Giuseppe says. "How do you stand him?"

"I don't," Harry answers, which is the best sort of lie insofar as it's true.

Giuseppe chuckles. "Can't blame you. Actors are all the same, opera starts even worse. Though Sorrentino brought this on himself, the way he's casting it."

"How's he casting it?"

"Gender reversal," Giuseppe answers, shaking his head. "A man to play Violetta, a woman to play Alfredo. He goes on about the implications to be drawn from it. Personally, I just think he wants to see your boy in a dress."

Harry quickly and decidedly puts that particular image out of his mind.

"Will that fly with the investors, though?" Harry asks, sounding as casual as he's able.

Giuseppe gives him a sidelong look.

"I heard Anna and Giacomo talking about it. Pretty conservative lot, aren't they? Can't imagine they'd be all right with something so…"

Giuseppe's look of suspicion hasn't faded. So despite his aversion to the term, he concludes with—

"… faggy."

It takes a moment, but eventually Giuseppe smirks. Harry releases a breath, but keeps it brief to avoid suspicion.

"That's what I said," Giuseppe says, taking a swig from the bottle. "He hasn't told them yet. I'm looking forward to when he does. I wouldn't be surprised if they pull the plug on the whole production."

"Do you think they would?" Harry asks. He knows that the investors are almost certainly within the inner circle of the extremists, and the more information he can milk from Giuseppe, the better. "The whole production?"

"Well, maybe," Giuseppe continues. "I mean, they'll certainly _want_ to. But they do need the show to go on, especially because—"

Giuseppe seems to catch himself, and shakes his head. Harry wants nothing ore than to drag more information out of him, but it would likely raise too much suspicion if he kept prying. It does bring some rather important questions to the fore – why do the extremists need a show to go on? What is it about the month of December and this building that the extremists need?

"Well, if he makes it to next week alive, you'll know he managed to convince them," Giuseppe says. "They should be dropping by to watch the early readthrough on Saturday."

 _That_ is certainly interesting. Or more to the point, it's something Draco needs to know. Harry takes a swig of his drink, then rises.

"Where you off to?"

"Got to take a piss," Harry answers, "then guard His Highness on the ride back to the flat."

"Have a good one," calls a nearby stagehand as Harry heads off. "And thanks for the booze!"

The echoing cries of agreement fade as Harry makes his way further into the wing, into the winding curtain labyrinth that is the backstage. He knows that Draco is here somewhere. He remembers hearing that he and the contralto opposite him would be meeting with Sorrentino to discuss characterization and theme. It had all sounded a bit wishy-washy to Harry, and Draco had called him an uncultured swine, and it had nearly made Harry irritated enough to not want to kiss him. Nearly.

As he goes further and further backstage, past all manner of bizarre and mismatched props all piled on top of each other, he begins to hear new voices – soft and indistinct at first, but growing shaper, and more familiar.

" _La prospecte t'excite?_ " he hears Draco ask, and Harry quickly waves on a translation charm over one ear to catch the end of his thought. "That seems somewhat… indecent of you, monsieur."

"Oh, what is decency in the theatre?" answers a voice that Harry knows to be Sorrentino, in what the charm indicates as somewhat broken and clumsy French. "I am a man of art, and I admire beauty wherever I find it."

"It is one thing to admire, and another entirely to—" Draco pauses for what Harry can only assume to be dramatic effect. "—act upon the admiration. I am a great admirer of this opera house, and I know that its investors may not take kindly to such displays."

"To hell with the investors."

"How do you – oh!"

A low, seductive chuckle. Harry is so suddenly and so all-encompassingly angry that the change makes him dizzy. Of _course_ this is Draco's method – flirting with the mark. Typical.

He comes around the corner of the curtain. Draco is sprawled against the cinderblock wall, Sorrentino half bent-over him, murmuring things just beyond the range of Harry's hearing.

Anger clouding what Harry would reluctantly admit to be his better judgment, he loudly clears his throat. Sorrentino springs off the wall, and Harry takes a not insignificant pleasure in his sudden alarm.

"You should keep your dog on a leash," Sorrentino growls when he sees who it is as he angrily adjusts his tie. Harry can all too easily imagine Draco fussing with it. He has vivid memories of Draco tugging at his own tie, pulling him into the closet at work to fuck or down onto the bed after work.

"Would that I could," Draco says, flustered. "Forger—"

"We need to get going," Harry interjects. "You're late for your treatment."

'Treatment' being the codeword for 'we need to talk,' Draco's eyes light with recognition. He doesn't seem happy about the recognition, however.

"Are we?" Draco sighs, consults his watch. "I suppose we are. Antonio, I'm terribly sorry, but I must dash. Do tell Mira that it was lovely to meet her, and that I look forward to working with her, won't you?"

Sorrentino smiles. "Of course, songbird."

"And I'll see you for the first readthrough," Draco says, winking. Harry feels like he may literally be burning into cinder.

Draco glides off, Harry a half-step behind. Before Draco can get in the first word, Harry says, "Surely there are less unsavory ways to get information out of him."

"But none so effective," Draco says, adjusting his cufflinks. Harry notices teethmarks on the side of Draco's neck, fresh and shallow and already fading, and Harry does his best to pretend that he doesn't want to go back and knock Antonio Sorrentino unconscious. "What's so important that you had to pull me away from the mark?"

"The investors are going to be present at the first readthrough," Harry says.

Draco glances back at him briefly. " _The_ investors?"

"Yes. So maybe you don't have to fuck the information out of him, after all."

"Are you jealous?"

"All I'm saying is I had no idea your standards fell so far after we split up."

Draco stops abruptly in an abandoned corner of the backstage maze, spinning on a heel and locking Harry with a furious glare.

"My _standards_ started slipping the moment I made the mistake of first fucking you," Draco hisses, and Harry growls in the back of his throat. "More to the point, they have no bearing on this situation. Your petty fucking jealousy—"

"I'm _not_ jealous."

"—then keep your fucking mouth shut about it and let me do my job!"

"And since when is it your job to seduce a known extremist sympathizer, Malfoy? Or do you reckon—"

" _Keep your fucking voice down._ "

Harry fumes, but falls silent. As much as he hates to admit it, Draco's right; he shouldn't be using such specific language, even when they're alone.

"Perhaps I will let him fuck me," Draco says, spitefully, and Harry sees red. "I may not even need any information, just to let someone do it properly for a change—"

At once, Harry seizes him by both wrists, spins him, and pins him into door of a nearby prop armoire. The wood rattles and Harry keeps his wrists pressed to it, above his head. Harry feels Malfoy tense up, and all the memories come flooding back. After all this time, he hasn't forgotten those telltale signs.

"Keep running your mouth, Malfoy," Harry says, "but don't bother lying. I know every inch of you, and I know exactly what's _proper_."

Malfoy's shuddering breath ghosts past Harry's jaw. Harry takes a very dark, very base pleasure in pulling him apart by every seam in him. He always has. He bends his head and whispers—

"Or do you need reminding?"

"Harry," Draco whispers, and Harry kisses him savagely, punishingly, and Draco is kissing him back. Harry abandons Draco's wrist to grab him by the jaw; Draco scrapes his fingernails frantically down Harry's neck. Harry presses into him, rattling the armoire, lifting him by the thigh and rutting forward—

—until it ends abruptly with Draco pushing him away.

And at the same time, they both realize what happened.

"Fuck," Draco says, and he leaves, rubbing at his kiss-bruised lips, leaving Harry standing, panting, dizzy and aching and remembering all over again everything he had tried so hard to forget.


	4. Roast

_Draco swallows the knee-jerk reaction ask what Ginny Weasley is doing in his office. It takes him a moment, but before long, he knows – before she even has to say it._

 _"_ _I know what you're doing with him."_

 _Draco wets his lips, spends a split-second judging the best course of action, then shrugs off his outer robe to hang it on the hook on the wall._

 _"_ _Get out of my office."_

 _"_ _Do you hear me, Malfoy? I know what you're doing with him. I saw you."_

 _"_ _And what? You're here to blackmail me?"_

 _He eyes her. She is standing by Harry's desk, distinguished by its mountains of untidy parchments and empty forms. Draco sits down at his own, a perfect contrast of neat stacks and order._

 _"_ _Good luck getting anyone to believe you."_

 _"_ _I'm not here to blackmail you, Malfoy, I'm here to warn you off him."_

 _"_ _Green isn't a good color on you, Weasley. As I recall, you had ample chance with him already."_

 _"_ _This isn't about jealousy!" Weasley says, a mite too shrill for Draco's liking. "This is about Harry. Do you have any idea what kind of position you're putting him in?"_

 _It takes a not insignificant amount of willpower not to immediately answer with "reverse cowgirl last night." He sits back in his office chair and the aging wood sighs._

 _"_ _The Weasleys come from the same sort of stock as the Malfoys," she continues. "Different in station, maybe, but our lenience for blood purity doesn't always extend into – other areas."_

 _Draco has a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that he knows where this point is going, but he stays quiet, watching as Weasley approaches his desk like a nervous, skittish animal inching toward food._

 _"_ _Harry loves my family," she says. "And my family loves him. But they haven't spoken to Charlie once since he came out. What do you think they'd do to Harry?"_

 _Draco looks away, though he wish he wouldn't. The response is sort of automatic. He doesn't want to look at Weasley, doesn't want to acknowledge the validity of her point._

 _"_ _Mine is the only family he's ever really had," she says. "Don't force him into a position where he has to choose between you and us."_

 _Draco forces himself to speak, because if he doesn't do so soon he's sure she'll get suspicious._

 _"_ _Well, you don't have to worry," he says, grabbing a quill and a half-finished form. "He won't have to choose. It's not serious."_

 _"_ _Maybe not to him," she says, and Draco hates that he flinches. "Harry may not have seen it, but that's because Harry's daft with this sort of thing, but I'm not. I know what it looks like to be in love with Harry Potter."_

 _"_ _Get out of my office," Draco says, voice tight._

 _"_ _Break it off with him," she says, "before he gets hurt."_

 _"_ Get out of my office! _"_

 _She takes on a satisfyingly startled expression, then a half-step back. Her nostrils flare, but she does eventually turn around and stride from his office._

 _Draco is left feeling more vulnerable than he would dare admit. His fingers curl around the quill, and the brittle vane crumbles under the pressure._

 _He finds it necessary to tell himself that this is fine, that it doesn't matter, even though every aching fiber in his body disagrees._

* * *

"Here it is, Songbird. What do you think?"

"Mostly, I'm surprised you have it ready so early!"

It's a great, cerulean thing – if Harry knew anything about dresses, which he most decidedly does not, he would likely be even more impressed than he already is. The fabric is layered above the waist and bunched below so it falls in soft parabolas of thick satin. It has no sleeves, only a long pair of black opera gloves. Most notably, all along length of it, concentrated at the upper hem and diffusing closer to the floor, are strung tiny, glimmering rhinestones. It gives the effect of softly falling stars, like a nighttime sky trembling and dropping with each slight shift of the fabric.

Harry tries to picture Draco in it and does not try to analyze why doing so makes him itch.

"Oh, it still needs adjustment," Sorrentino says. "The costume designer will need to take your measurements and adjust it accordingly, but I knew from the outset what I wanted Violetta to wear. It gives the impression of the heavens, does it not?"

"It does," Draco admits.

"And that is what Violetta is," Sorrentino continues. "A heavenly angel sent down just long enough to educate us on the grave sin that is prejudice."

Harry takes a moment to remind himself that this is a man who has known ties to an extremist group so repugnant that the vast majority of its participants are wanted for hate crimes against Muggle Borns and other marginalized social groups. Harry wonders what level of cognitive dissonance would be necessary to decry prejudice while simultaneously laundering money for domestic terrorists.

"I should hope you'd ask me to play her as slightly more," Draco says.

"What do you mean?"

"To say that Violetta is nothing more than a lesson in morality does a disservice to her character," Draco says. "She has an arc and progression. She gives up a life of security and familiarity because of how she loves Alfredo. And she makes an even greater sacrifice – surrendering that love – for the same reason. She is far more than just a parable."

"Hm," Sorrentino says thoughtfully.

Harry wonders if it's possible that Malfoy is starting to enjoy the idea of being in an opera, despite the fact that he's here to undermine an extremist organization.

"Do you want me to try it on?"

Harry suddenly and desperately hopes not. For reasons just beyond articulation, he feels like he needs some amount of emotional preparation before he sees Draco in the decadent blue dress on the mannequin in front of them.

"Would that I could, Songbird, but we have a read-through to get to. And I have to speak with one of the investors before we get started."

"One? Are there many in attendance?"

"There should be three," Sorrentino says, sighing. "Don't worry yourself; let me deal with them."

Draco glances back briefly at Harry. He raises his eyebrows in the silent question – _split up?_ Harry nods once, barely, in agreement – _split up_.

"Well, then, we should to the house."

"I'll keep watch outside," Harry says. "No interest in hearing any warbling today."

"Songbird, you simply must invest in new help."

"It is so hard to find these days," Draco sighs, sliding his arm into Sorrentino's, and he must know Harry is watching, because why else would he do it? "Is there anything else I should know about the investors?" he hears Draco say as they exit and move down the hallway, voices fading.

Harry grinds his teeth and does his best to focus on the task at hand. He exits the room a moment later, turning in the opposite direction, toward the front of the building, the antechamber and the foyer.

The first reading has turned into something of an event. The entire cast, of course, is gathered and chatting amiably amongst themselves; a few members of the crew, made distinctive by dressing in all black, are gathered around a soft settee by the wall. And in the center of the room—

Harry recognizes one of them at once – tall, dark-haired, pointy – it can only be Gregor Ivanov, a Russian expat, wartime Death Eater sympathizer, and known extremist. It would, legally, be within Harry's rights to arrest him immediately, or at least tell their Italian contact to do so. He refrains, however. At present, Ivanov is of much more used to him free and loose-lipped.

Harry passes by in time to catch the tail-end of Ivanov's sentence.

"… distasteful, though, don't you think?"

"Immensely," sighs the woman across from him. It takes Harry a moment, but he recognizes her, too – Marina Esposito, a Spaniard who managed to keep her official record cleaner than Ivanov's, but who nevertheless wound up on the radar for ties to the extremist groups in Barcelona. "Unfortunately, that is the unspoken caveat of working with artists. They are always do distasteful in the name of their art."

"But gender reversal? A man to play Violetta, a woman Alfredo? It's indecent. Giuseppe Verdi would roll in his grave."

"In the end, Gregor," Esposito says, "the play is _not_ the thing. What matters is in the cellar."

Harry knows just how to stand to avoid drawing attention to himself, of course, but it gets more difficult to maintain when the metaphorical ears prick up. What's in the cellar? Are they talking about the cellar of the opera house?

More and more stagehands are entering through the front door, making it harder for Harry to hear their conversation. He can only catch bits and pieces – words like _work_ and _project_ and _phoenix_. By the time the occupants of the room empty and move into the house to watch the readthrough, the conversation has ended, and Harry is left alone, frowning.

After some thought, Harry decides to try and find the cellar.

To his surprise, all he has to do is follow a line of stagehands – they are heading down in mumbling groups of four and five, through a side hallway and down a utilitarian set of stone stairs. Harry begins to suspect that they are not stagehands at all.

He follows one group lower and lower until one of them notices him; he stops to pretend to read a plaque on the wall about the natural geothermal vent onto which the opera was built (from whence it got its name). The look of suspicion lingers, but a moment later the whole group vanishes behind a nondescript door.

Harry approaches the door. It's magically sealed with several layers of intricate spellwork; Harry knows better than to tamper with it. He's good a brute force, but precision has always been Draco's forte. As much as he resents the idea, he'll have to go to him for help.

Harry rolls his tongue along his teeth, unwillingly remembering all the times before when that dynamic worked so well on the field. Harry's raw strength, Draco's careful exactness; the reason they'd been so good for so long was precisely because they had been perfect complements, always bringing out the best in each other.

His mind goes back even further, despite how he doesn't want it to, over those long months when they were together, when Harry—

He puts it from his mind. Now is not the time to dwell on all the nearly-hads. He has a job to do.


	5. Burn

_Harry comes home and Draco is waiting for him, slumped back in Harry's too-old sofa, helping himself to a glass of Harry's sub-par wine. The remnants of his sobriety tell him that he must look a sight – hair disheveled, eyes bloodshot, fingers twitching. Draco has never been a particularly elegant drunk._

 _Harry stops for a time in the Floo, watching Draco like he's not entirely sure what's happening. He looks back to the Floo, then back to Draco._

 _Then, "Breaking into my house?"_

 _Draco finishes off the inadequate wine. It's mostly backwash._

 _"_ _And stealing my liquor, too," Harry says when he notices. "And here I thought you couldn't get any classier."_

 _"_ _I'm resigning from the DMLE."_

 _Harry stops, caught off-guard, hands fumbling halfway through the process of taking off his robe. He doesn't seem to process the words for several seconds, staring at Draco with wide green eyes and frumpy black hair and kissable lips._

 _"_ _What?"_

 _"_ _Effective next Monday," Draco says. "I'm to be transferred to the Department of Mysteries; I'm told a position as an Unspeakable has opened up and it's right up my street."_

 _"_ _Resigning?"_

 _"_ _That is what I said," Draco answers._

 _"_ _You – Malfoy, you can't resign!"_

 _"_ _I assure you that I can," Draco returns. "I have, in fact. I submitted the letter weeks ago."_

 _"_ Weeks _ago! And, what, you just forgot to fucking mention it to me, your partner?"_

 _"_ _You're not my partner."_

 _A moment passes in which they both realize that they're using different meanings of the word, and then that the difference doesn't change the conversation much._

 _Draco detects a trace of what he thinks is sadness on Potter's face, before it is consumed by anger._

 _"_ _Why didn't you tell me?" he shouts._

 _"_ _Because I didn't want two weeks of this shit," Draco answers. "That's not the question you want to ask, in any case. Go on, Potter. I've been bracing myself."_

 _Potter's hand clenches at his side, his teeth set, squaring his jaw. Draco drums his fingers on the side of the glass and waits._

 _"_ _Why?" Harry asks, finally, sounding a little bit sad but mostly angry as fuck. "Why are you leaving?"_

 _"_ _Because you are not my partner," Draco says._

 _It's the answer he'd rehearsed under his breath for ten days now, the answer that felt the most right even though it wasn't, because nothing was, because even the truth felt wrong._

 _Harry is visibly upset now, moreso than Draco had expected. There's betrayal in his eyes, rage in the sinews of his fists, hurt in the tension of his shoulders._

 _"_ _We're good together," Harry says. Draco doesn't know if he's talking about the field or whatever fucked up not-relationship they have. Draco doesn't know if Harry knows._

 _"_ _We're really not."_

 _"_ _We're fucking brilliant!" Harry shouts at him. "Even when you're a standoffish prick and I'm a reckless bastard,_ especially _then – we're a nightmare, but when has that not been the best thing about us?"_

 _"_ _It can't keep going on like this." Draco rises, sways slightly. He's losing his resolve faster than he thought he would. All the walls he built around himself with anger and alcohol are starting to crumble, and Draco knows if he doesn't get out soon, everything will be laid bare. He starts toward the Floo. Harry grabs his elbow, turns him around._

 _"_ _What do you want from me?" Harry asks, angrily, but it's a flimsy veneer for growing anguish. "I try to get close to you, you push me away; I try to keep my distance, you draw me back in!"_

 _"_ _I've never drawn you in," Draco growls._

 _"_ _Everything about you draws me in!" Harry bellows at him. "Your hair, your skin, your fucking smartass remarks, you're everything I ever wanted, even when you never let me in!"_

 _Draco has to get out. "I'm leaving."_

 _"_ _Draco—!"_

 _"_ _I'll get my things over the weekend," Draco says, grabbing a handful of Floo powder from the repurposed flower pot. "Don't fucking owl me."_

 _A rush of green fire, a mighty lurch; Draco's too drunk for this, and yet somehow not nearly drunk enough. When he falls back into his flat, it is quite literal falling; he tumbles head over tits onto the bare mahogany floor, landing hard on his elbows._

 _He starts to sob – angrily, furiously – though not from the pain of landing._

* * *

They've started doing dress rehearsals, which is unbearable.

Harry would like to say it's unbearable because he knows it means they're making very little progress over a large amount of time – it's been about three weeks now – but realistically, he knows it's because now he has to see Draco done up as Violetta.

Draco in a floor-length ballroom gown should be hilarious, but it isn't. Draco with his hair long and layered should be and endless source of jokes, and not appearing in Harry's dreams with alarming frequency. Draco with his long, slender arms hugged by black silk opera gloves should be – well, it should be anything other than what it actually _is_ , which is unbearably and frustratingly _fucking hot_.

"Hurry up, we haven't got much longer."

"Keep your fucking pants on, Potter."

"No names, _Daupin_."

" _Va te faire foutre_ , how's that? In character enough for you?"

Harry growls and looks back at him with the intent to shoot off a counter-insult, but it gets lost somewhere in his throat when he sees Draco – _God_ – bent forward at the waist in front of the heavily-spelled door, the long blue ballgown curving gently over his back and down his legs, and all at once Harry's mind is filled with images of hiking it up and mounting him like a prized racehorse—

Harry quickly turns forward, physically biting the inside of his cheek and using his go-to image of Filch in a muumuu to keep himself in check.

"This fucking door has so many layers," Draco growls. "What kind of sadist savant designed this magical locking mechanism?"

"One smarter than you, apparently," Harry answers.

"Suck an entire bag of cocks, Potter. I don't see _you_ figuring it out."

"There's got to be some sort of spell designed to open it in one go," Harry says.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," Draco snaps, "and it has to be a simple and common one for the number of people going in and out every day, but that only narrows it down to _The Standard Book of Spells_ , grades one through seven, so unless you have an idea—"

"They've been casting it nonverbally," Harry says. He knows; he's listened.

"And despite my best efforts, trying to fuck the answer out of Sorrentino isn't helping."

A very base, primal sort of anger rises up along the back of Harry's neck, a rage that burns cold.

"So you've fucked him," Harry says. He does not phrase it as either a statement or a question.

"What's it to you if I have, Potter?"

And perhaps it doesn't matter – not realistically, not practically – but any part of Harry that acknowledges that reality is far too jealous to care.

"Are you really going to punish me for being upset that you're fucking someone else, Malfoy?"

Draco doesn't answer. It's a nice change of pace.

" _You_ broke it off. _You_ left loose ends untied. Why does it fucking surprise you when it makes me crazy that you're sleeping with someone else?"

A brief lapse of silence. Then, "I haven't slept with him."

Harry looks back. Draco's eyes are focused on the door, his loose tresses of hair falling around his ears, but his expression has changed in some tiny, unknowable way.

"People are fountains of information right before and right after they've gotten what they want," Draco says, "and it's easier to drag out the former."

Harry is silent. He can't take his eyes off him, despite best efforts. The little silver rhinestones on his dress glimmer in the low light, and he looks so fucking beautiful Harry feels like he could punch through solid rock.

"I haven't slept with anyone, since—" He stumbles a moment, regains his footing. "—not that I haven't tried. Especially now that I'm to play Violetta, the whole thing's a little on the nose for me."

"What?"

"You know," Draco mutters, twisting his wand just so, jabbing it forward, sending little arcs of magic pulsing and twisting in the aging wood, " _La traviata_. The parallels aren't lost on me."

"What parallels?"

Draco glances at him, frowns. "Christ, Potter, you really don't pay attention at all, do you?"

Harry frowns. Draco rolls his eyes.

" _La traviata_ is about a woman – a courtesan, looked down upon by society but well-off enough to still be affluent. Violetta. She meets Alfredo, who she falls in love with, who she gives up her life to be with monogamously. Then—"

Draco sighs heavily.

"—then, I don't know, typical Verdi opera, a good woman forced into a bad situation, she breaks it off with Alfredo for his own protection, he hurts her in a heartbroken rage, she dies in the end. It's all very typical of the medium, if you ask me, and a little overdone."

"And you see parallels in that?" Harry asks. "To us? To what we went through?"

Draco starts suddenly. "No."

But Harry knows what he heard. "You said Violetta broke it off with Alfredo to protect him."

"This door isn't going to open tonight," Draco says, straightening. "When we have more time, we should come back and try to combine magical energy to—"

Harry can think of nothing he cares less about, at that precise moment, than the door. "You never gave me a reason why you broke it off," Harry says. "I begged you – I _pleaded_ with you to tell me why, but you never did. Why did you transfer out of the DMLE?"

Draco scowls at him. "I'm going back up," he says, and starts past Harry, but Harry grabs him by the elbow.

"Don't fucking walk away from me!" Harry says. "Not again! Why did you break it off?"

"Get your hands off me!" Draco snaps at him, pulling free from his grip. In response, Harry grabs him by both shoulders and presses him into the wall. Draco makes a sharp noise of protest, but Harry is not going to let him go anywhere. He's not going to let Draco waltz out of his life _again_.

"What were you protecting me from?" Harry demands, loudly, louder than perhaps he should. Dress rehearsal has only just ended, and while the theatre is mostly empty, it is not devoid of life. "What _possible_ fucking reason could possess you to think—"

Then, all at once, it hits him, with such sudden and brutal clarity that Harry's breathless.

"Get off me."

"It was Ginny."

"Get off me!"

"Wasn't it?" Harry says. "It was Ginny! She came to you, didn't she? What did she tell you?"

"Potter, if you don't get your _fucking hands off me_ —"

"I knew she was angry when I broke up with her, but I didn't think—!"

"It wasn't about that!" Draco shouts at him suddenly, shrugging once again out of Harry's hands. "She had no grand fucking scheme of winning you back by breaking us up! She just – she reminded me – of – of _things_ —"

" _What_ things?"

"Things about her family!" Draco's getting angry now, too, every exposed muscle in his shoulders and swanlike neck tense and trembling with it. "Things about you! Things about what our relationship would do to you, to them, the position it would force you into!"

Harry is hurt and angry and confused and he isn't sure if he wants to punch Draco or kiss him or hold him down and fuck him.

"The Weasleys may be blood egalitarian, Potter, but accepting their youngest son marrying a Muggle-Born is peanuts compared to accepting their adopted son fucking another wizard!" he shouts at him. He's hugging his own torso now, holding onto the glimmering stars on his chest. "My father would be just as angry, and I couldn't do that to you! I couldn't make you choose like that!"

The silence that follows deafens. Harry stares at him in silence, trying very hard to formulate something like a coherent response. Months of anger and resentment and confusion, and this is what it came down to? All this time, Draco was protecting him?

"It wasn't your choice to make," Harry says, eventually.

Draco doesn't answer.

"Maybe they would have – have disowned me. Maybe they wouldn't have. You don't know. _I_ don't know. But either way, it wasn't _your choice_. It wasn't _your job_ to make up my mind!"

"Potter—"

"Do you have any idea how badly you fucked me up, leaving like you did? No explanation, no warning?" Harry looms down over him, and Draco tries to hold his ground, but Harry has a good couple inches on him. "I was—!"

There it is – the word hangs heavy on the edge of his tongue, the word he spent so much time and effort denying. And somehow, even after everything that's happened, he just can't say it.

So instead he does the next best thing – he grabs Draco by the sides of his face and kisses him like they're both dying.

Draco kisses back, every inch of his body all at once against Harry's, and Harry is on fire, all-consuming fire, and his hands scramble around his neck, down his back, and Draco's rip at his jacket, the buttons of his shirt. There is no finesse, no care, just anger and passion and teeth.

"Harry – aaaa _aaahhh_ —!"

Harry's locked his mouth on Draco's pulse point, and his hands grab at the bunched fabric of Draco's dress and pulls, and Harry's blood is pounding as his fingertips trace the garter going up his femoral artery.

"Draco—"

" _If your next words aren't 'I'm going to fuck you,' I'll hex you blind._ "

Harry makes a feral noise. Three weeks of foreplay, perhaps, had been enough. "I'm going to fuck you," Harry growls into Draco's mouth, and Draco moans heavily in response, and Harry rips away whatever underthings are there – he's too electric to care – with a wordless, wandless spell. A second spell slicks his fingers, and the fingers press down, around, and in—

" _Fuck!_ " Draco sobs, back pressed to the wall, leg around Harry's hip, exquisite dress bunched around his waist. "Fuck, those fingers, I'd nearly forgotten—"

Harry certainly hadn't; every single memory of pulling Draco to that ecstatically beautiful edge of orgasm with nothing but his fingers fucking him and a sweet and filthy word is burned into Harry's mind. He pistons his fingers, and just like old times, Draco unravels.

And even though Harry could spend hours doing just this – and he has – there is an urgency that denies him such luxurious patiences. "Legs up," Harry says, and he presses Draco back. Draco lifts his other leg and Harry tugs at the front of his trousers and barely manages to cast the usual spells for protection before he lines himself up and fucks into Draco Malfoy's hot, pliant body with one long, thorough thrust.

Draco howls, and Harry claps a hand over his mouth to keep the sound from echoing further than it has to. Draco, as always, feels fantastic – slick with lubricant and burning hot and so fucking tight – Harry uses the leverage that holds him into the wall to rock his hips, to fuck him with every ounce of heartache and anger and desperation still in him, and Draco's fingers tangle in his hair, nails digging into his scalp. Draco is chanting " _yes, fuck, yes-yes-yes, deeper, Harry, Merlin, it's so good,_ " and Harry bites down hard on his shoulder, fingers gripping the soft satin of his dress, driving into him with no easy rhythm but every drop of strength he has.

It is surging and burning and thrumming and intensifying; he can feel Draco's cock aching hard through the silk against Harry's stomach, feel his body clamping down around him as Harry fucks him, and Harry is holding him tighter and rocking deeper and shouting into his hair and coming with impossible intensity into him as Draco spasms and bucks and sobs _yes, yes_ in his arms.

It takes some time for them both to come down, physically as much as emotionally. By the time Harry pulls out of him and Draco slides back down the wall, they're both weak and panting – and for one brief moment, Harry looks at Draco, and Draco looks back at him, and Harry wonders – if he tries, will he be able to say it? Finally, after so many months of trying?

But there are noises coming from the far end of the hall—

"—get it done before opening night or Esposito will skewer us both—"

"Fuck," Draco says. Harry grabs his arm and runs.

"—don't want to be on her bad side, that's for sure."

Two stagehands come around the corner; they dive into a large armoire at the endof the hall.

"It'll be done before then. And God help them when it is."

They chuckle, they leave.

Harry and Draco pant in near-silence. They look to each other, then through the sliver of door.

And Harry knows they won't talk about what happened.


	6. Shine

Depending on how one chooses to look at it, things are either progressing nicely or at a complete standstill. It's true, for example, that they haven't been able to make it past the cellar door despite several weeks of increasingly convoluted efforts; however, it is also true that Draco has been working through each careful layer of spellwork one by one, and that the progress is measurable, just not, they are beginning to suspect, quick enough, as the deadline of opening night looms.

Similarly, it is true that the incident in the hallway against the wall over fifteen breathless, passionate, blindingly erotic minutes has gone more or less unacknowledged by either party since it happened, but it is also true that in that interim silence, Harry has confronted several realities that he had theretofore left unexamined. He doesn't know exactly what to do with the new information, but he nonetheless has it.

The deadline is drawing ever closer, however, entirely unconcerned with their progress, or lack thereof. Dress rehearsals came and went, tickets for opening night sold out rapidly, and the shadow of everything they had not yet seen through became a perpetual cloud hanging over their heads.

Then, on the evening of opening night, the answer metaphorically hit Harry over the head in the form of a conversation.

"And Singh is definitely coming?"

It's two of the investors, speaking under their breaths as they exit the house toward the end of the final dress rehearsal. Harry stops several yards away and around the corner, rooting through his pockets, ostensibly searching for his pocket watch, giving him a reason to eavesdrop.

"She is," answers the other. It's Esposito and Ivanov again; Harry is beginning to suspect that they are the ones in charge of the project under the opera house. "Dirty traitor whore. She deserves worse."

Harry racks his mind. The only Singh that Harry can think of who would be relevant is Malai Singh, a noted Thai blood egalitarian and activist. But why would she be coming here? She would hardly travel in the same circles as Esposito and Ivanov – if anything, they would have reason to…

Harry's mind churns slowly.

"And the rest?"

"Almost all accepted. Don't worry, Marina, everything will come to fruition."

"So long as we're far enough away before that curtain rises tonight."

Harry may not be as quick as Draco, but it doesn't take any sort of genius to put it together. His heart rate picks up. If he's right, they have only hours before hundreds of people are going to die.

Harry turns to head back toward the house, and then the answer literally hits Harry over the head in the form of a sharp confundus hex.

Harry staggers forward; but for years of Auror training and learned resistance to hexes, he would be unconscious. He splays his hand on the wall, tries to catch himself and then feels a wand pressed to the back of his neck.

"Eavesdropping, _Forger?_ "

Even delirious from near-unconsciousness, Harry recognizes Giuseppe's voice. Harry wets his lips and spends a few critical seconds trying to put together a plan through the haze of pain.

"Word came down from above – a mole was found intercepting communications, an Italian spy who claims to be a contact to two undercover English aurors."

"What's under the opera house?" Harry slurs, foregoing his fake accent.

"Never you mind that, Forger," Giuseppe answers, "or whatever your name is. Only one of the pair of you needs to be alive for questioning, and frankly, I think we could have more fun with the blonde."

Harry feels a sudden surge of fear and adrenaline.

" _Avada_ —"

Harry regains his footing, spins, and _CRACK_ – Giuseppe's neck snaps under his hands like fragile porcelain before the rest of the curse is out of his mouth. Harry pants, and his vision swims, and he drags Giuseppe's body into a nearby closet. It's not perfect, but it will have to do. Either way, Harry's sure it won't matter past the moment the curtain rises in _La fenice_.

* * *

"Malfoy!"

Draco spins, and he can tell at once that Harry's been hit with a bad hex. There aren't a lot of good explanations for that.

"Fuck," he says.

"We've been found out. I think I know what the plan is, and we have to go _now_. We have to get into the cellar or a lot of people are going to die!"

Draco rises. With his hair tied back and leg warmers sagging around his ankles, he's hardly battle ready. "The opera—"

"Fuck the show, Malfoy, there's some kind of bomb under the opera house, and people are already starting to arrive!"

It goes against every artistic bone in his body, but Draco swears and grabs his wand off the vanity. "Let's go."

"They've invited a whole bunch of blood egalitarians, activists, outspoken politicians," Harry says as they run from the dressing room. "I checked the list in the box office before I came. They're going to get all their enemies in one place and—"

" _Fuck_ ," Draco hisses.

"We need to get down there right now, but I don't know—"

"I can get us down," Draco says.

"Then why haven't you yet?"

"Because up till now I've been going for subtlety over speed, but now that we're pressed for time—"

 _CRASH!_ The moment they come around the corner, a red bolt of light flies past Draco's head and shatters a mirror behind them. Draco counts two, four, eight – _shit_.

"You take the left," Harry says.

"Just like old times," Draco answers, and they dive into the fray, wands blazing.

* * *

In the front of the house, the guests arrive, dressed to the nines, glittering, laughing, chatting about the bold new reimagining of the classic.

Along the sides, out of view, a battle rages. Bodies drop one by one, curses fly, plaster splits and crumbles. Harry and Draco fight their way down and down and down, through what feels like an endless number of stagehands, all of them apparently alerted to their presence.

"We have to pool magical power," Draco says, panting hard as they run down the last stretch of hallway toward the door. "My finesse, your raw strength. A temporary psychic link that lets us channel one magic into the wards over the door."

"Sounds good," Harry says. "Let's do it."

"Give me your hand."

Harry extends it. Draco grabs it too tightly, and somehow not tight enough.

For a moment, sort of vaguely and distantly, Harry can feel Malfoy's presence, his magic pressing into his own – but even with Harry's limited knowledge of cooperative magic, he can tell—

"What's wrong?" Harry asks. "Why isn't it working?"

Draco's eyes are shut, frowning in impatient concentration at the doorway. "We're not – we aren't letting each other in."

"What does that mean?"

Draco grinds his teeth. "It means that our magic doesn't want to combine because we have unresolved issues."

Harry stares at him in silence for a moment. Then, "Our magic wants us to work out our baggage."

"No, _we_ want to work out our baggage!" Draco snaps, yanking his hand from Harry's, and Harry shakes off the sudden feeling of bereftness. "Magic is only as cooperative as the magic user's mind lets it be. We can't work together because _we can't work together_ , because we're too caught up with everything we're not talking about!"

"You've got to be fucking kidding me!" Harry shouts at him. "Hundreds of people are going to die because we're scared of emotional vulnerability?"

"We don't have time for this!" Draco shouts back at him, then he grips his hair and screws his eyes shut and says, "I – fuck – Harry, I – I'm sorry about what happened with Weasley—"

"Are we really doing this?"

" _What choice do we have?_ "

It's a good question, and as patently ridiculous as it seems to hang the lives of so many people on them working out their unresolved emotional issues, Harry supposes there's little enough point in fighting it.

"Fine," Harry says. "Fine! Yes, you should fucking be sorry!"

"Well, I am!" Draco yells, voice echoing through the hallway. "I'm really sorry! I just wanted to do what was best for you!"

"Well bang-up job on that, Malfoy, because what you ended up doing was absolutely fucking _wrecking me_. I was not sober for a week after you left!"

" _I'm sorry!_ " Draco cries again. "It just – God, I was just so scared – not only of hurting you, but of letting myself get hurt – it's not easy for me, you know!"

"Are you honestly trying to get me to sympathize with you after you broke up with _me?_ "

Something behind the door rumbles. They both seem to realize that they don't have a lot of time left.

"You grew up with Muggles, Harry! It's different for you! Pureblood culture is just – it's so bloody steeped in homophobia; I grew up hating myself for having a crush on Blaise Zabini, feeling like absolute filth every time I daydreamed about a boy, and it's not like any of that went away!"

The rumbling gets louder. "Malfoy, talk faster!"

"And then you just sauntered back into my life and you were so funny and charming and you just forgave me for everything that happened, even though I didn't deserve it—"

"Didn't deserve it? Malfoy, of course you deserved it—!"

"—and you're perfect and lovely and fit and I hated myself for how much I liked you, and when Weasley came along it was so much easier to follow her logic than to admit to myself that I—"

Harry stares at him, then the door, then Draco again, then the door again. "That what? Malfoy, we haven't got the time—!"

"It was easier to agree with her than it was to admit to myself that I was scared because I was falling in love with you!"

"Malfoy, I was falling in love with you, too, you absolute fucking knob!"

Harry grabs him by the face and kisses him ferociously, because they do _not_ have time for this, and Draco kisses him back like fire and sin, and he grabs Harry's hand in his own and presses it into the door. There comes a great shattering sound, an explosion of magic, and not only does the ward come apart, but so does the entire door, like brittle glass.

Harry drags himself away just as Draco does, and they cross through into a dark, cavernous, boiling hot room – the exposed vein of the hot spring running underneath the opera house. It is swelling with Dark Magic, pulsing and vibrating and rumbling to a crescendo.

"They've run the curse through the entire spring!" Draco cries over the deafening sound. "This could take out the whole city!"

"Can we disarm it?" Harry shouts back at him.

Draco looks at him a moment, then holds up his hand as an offer to Harry.

Harry takes it without a second though. "Once more, then, with feeling!"

Draco's magic surges into Harry's, and together, with one great force of magic, they _push_ —

* * *

Draco can tell by the movement of Shacklebolt's eyes that he's read the same line for the fifth time. He wets his lips, glances sideways at Harry, who gives him a small, reassuring smile.

"Well," Shacklebolt says eventually, slowly, setting the report back down, "I suppose the bright side of this whole ordeal is that you managed to keep the total number of deaths below double digits."

"In fairness, Minister," Draco says, "we did tell you that we didn't want to work together."

"Yes, _that_ was the big oversight in this case."

Draco sits back, looking rather like a scolded child.

"You breached protocol so many times and in so many – let's call it – _unlikely_ ways that frankly I'm amazed you managed to achieve the mission's objective," Shacklebolt says. "It would be within my rights to strip both of you of your badges."

"I'm here on contract from the D of M, you can't strip me of what I don't have," Draco says.

"And I am objectively the best auror on staff," Harry says, "so firing me would be a colossal waste of resources."

"Yes, thanks," Shacklebolt snips at them. "How about we just send Mr. Malfoy back to his position as an Unspeakable, put Mr. Potter back with his previous partner, and if the Department of Internal Affairs comes knocking, we all plead obliviation?"

"Gladly, Sir," Harry says.

"What mission, Sir?" Draco adds.

"Now both of you get out of my office."

They stand up and leave before Shacklebolt comes up with another reason to yell at them. When the heavy oak door swings shut behind them, they both ease – Draco with a loosening through the shoulders, Harry with a single long, deep breath.

"That could have been worse," Harry decides.

"He could have hexed us, I suppose," Draco says.

"You know," Harry says, "breaches of protocol aside, we were pretty spectacular."

Draco looks at him sideways look. Harry grins at him.

"Dinner?" Harry asks.

"Fine," Draco says, "but no more of that shitty Muggle takeout you like so much. We're _actual_ partners now, and it's time we started acting like it."

Harry laces his fingers easily into Draco's. "Sounds good to me."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** AAAAAAAA thank you for reading! Especially those of you who were here from the beginning, I love you most of all! If you liked it, leave a review! I love me some reviews. :D


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